


Principles of Practical Lepidopterology: A Case Study for the Advanced Novice

by odditycollector



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Bad Puns, Black Romance, Bondage, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-27
Updated: 2011-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-28 06:57:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/305045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odditycollector/pseuds/odditycollector
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vriska's ankles roll as though daring gravity to do anything so ill-considered as affect her, as she takes step after showy step closer to the undoing you have crafted for her.</p><p>This is the summary of everything one needs to understand about the psychological conundrum that is Vriska Serket.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Principles of Practical Lepidopterology: A Case Study for the Advanced Novice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SeventeenPieces](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeventeenPieces/gifts).



When Vriska catches sight of the trap you have woven across an empty storeroom, she leaves the path that would have taken her to the common lounge and struts - nay - swaggers in the direction of its multi-extant threads. Her ankles roll as though _daring_ gravity to do anything so ill-considered as affect her, as she takes step after showy step closer to the undoing you have crafted for her.

This is the summary of everything one needs to understand about the psychological conundrum that is Vriska Serket.

Vriska stops with a click of her boot and a scatter of tiny blue wing scales that you refuse absolutely to refer to as “fairy dust”. She tilts her head to better examine your work with her compound eye, and she is barely an inch from the closest tendrils, so that you must actively focus to stop them from reaching prematurely. There is a reason you didn’t bother to weave a lure.

After eight seconds (approximately, you are no lord of time) Vriska looks through the spaces in the trap and smiles at you with jagged alien teeth. “Really, Lalonde? A web? To catch me?” She draws out the last word: meeeeeeee????????

“I agree,” you say. Looking at her always itches at the space behind your eyes, like your optic nerves themselves are allergic to her presence, but your voice is calm. “Plumbing the shoals of irony isn’t my usual style.”

You raise a hand now, and a quick twitch of your Thorn severs the narrow thread leaving your trap from the edge nearest Vriska’s singular pupil, the one that cannot see your brand of borrowed black magic. The weaving springs out faster than the reaction time of a god, if it is this god. Vriska is thrown against the opposite wall in a fury of magic thread and flapping butterfly wings and wide orange eyes.

You’ve surprised her, and there is a part of you that warms with the satisfied certainty of it. Once one accepts the mantle of a Hero of Light, surprises come hard as blows to the solar plexus. Presuming, of course, one’s species is equipped.

It would have been uncouth of you not to repay the favour.

“That’s why I prefer to think of it as a ‘net’,” you say, and you allow yourself a narrow smile.

Under your guidance, the magic threads untangle and wind themselves into new patterns. They slither from one another’s grasp and wrap around Vriska’s struggling ankles or reach across her shoulders. Soon, she is held with her back flush to the wall and her limbs contained, except for her thrashing wings. Blue scales waft through the air like thin smoke, and you recall Vladimir Nabokov’s advice against the physical containment of any large insect you wish to preserve, lest you damage the wings.

No, the best results are had by putting pressure against each side of the thorax. And squeezing....

You don’t give this command to your tendrils, but Vriska has finished testing the material strength of her bonds. She ceases all nominally apparent struggle.

“What’s the big idea!” she demands, a flimsy mask of anger over her fear and, yes, excitement at this uncertainty, at this obvious and utter failure of her predictions. As a Light player, she is an endless fount of second hand embarrassment, as well as a menace.

“The big idea,” you say slowly, casing out the shape of the phrase as though you are considering stealing it for your own, “is that you and I are going to have an instructive conversation on the topic of how not to get your co-players killed.”

Vriska scoffs and rolls her eyes, which isn’t even half-effective at covering up her initial guilty cringe. Your level of interest is slightly less than in the mean measured temperature in Nebraska during the third Saturday of its last May.

“Are you still on about that? You got better, didn’t you. I told you, I was just trying to make it easier for you to pick the best outcome!”

“The best outcome for you, not for the rest of us. Since you’re still having difficulty with the concept, how lucky for you that I am going to explain it in detail. And that you are, for once, going to listen.”

“Oh, am I?” Her face is a sneer outlined in blue, and her mouth moves even after she’s finished speaking, pantomiming a 8lah, 8lah, 8lah. You would call her on this, if you were in the mood to waste ten minutes debating the merits of a full vocabulary. For Vriska, you will never be in the mood.

You keep your response neat.

“Yes.”

Your net was spun from power beyond the furthest ring, and that magic is at once real and not real, present and not present. A delicately balanced probability superposition, and you know when it changes by the sickening twist through your gut.

The tendrils don’t weaken. Nothing about the threads binding Vriska’s weapon hand alters, to any other’s Sight, but no working is ever perfect. That minute probability of their failure increases to one you’d gamble on, if you still had the habit of thinking in discrete events, and the entire wave-function of reality shudders to account for the change.

You could draw down new tendrils to assist, and guide them to strengthen their failing predecessors. And as they give way under the same nauseating attack, draw down more to follow those. You could hold Vriska as long as you were willing to fight to keep her; your powers are enough to contain her, to knock her down again and again, and her unsubtle opening gambit can’t be mistaken for anything other than an invitation to do exactly that.

As though this were a game between the two of you, a continuation of every solid future that has dropped lurchingly from under your feet, of that last signposted path that led with one step to victory and the next to your own inane and painful demise.

Perhaps it is, but you have no intention of letting her define the play.

Instead you direct the threads to reach out for Vriska’s horns and tie them back to the wall. As you tighten them, your bindings ride up to the side-growths at the tops of her horns; of the trolls you’ve met, this is a trick that would work with hers alone. Tendrils grip securely under hook and under fork, and you drag her head upwards until Vriska’s heels leave the ground. Her eyes and mouth gape open.

“Unfair!” Vriska cries, and you can as well as see the misplaced 8 and its vapid entourage of exclamation points. Unf8r!!!!!!!! Paradox space should collapse under the weight of such hypocrisy. But the probability of your tendrils keeping down her hand stops leaking from the world. The certainty of your hold on her horns doesn’t so much as wobble.

“In a conflict between you and me, Serket?” you say. “That’s very nearly a tautology.”

The yellow circle on her chest shines like a pin pressed through, holding her steady for your personal display or leisurely dissection. It would be a more cheering thought if that same stamp didn’t lie below your own breastbone.

Vriska’s breath comes shallow and quick, like you dragged your magic lines across her throat rather than her horns. She’s making a noise, one of the clicking, hissing growls of which the troll species has an entire dictionary of variants. They are all just familiar enough to alert human instinct, and just strange enough that your hindbrain can’t decide _which_ instinct should be called. You have become overly practised at ignoring seven contradictory impulses, and the confused hormone rush to support them.

Currently, Vriska sounds like a cicada doing its best imitation of a golden retriever. Her hips rock against the wall, thrusting into empty space, and her horns yank very softly in their bindings. Even now, she feels it necessary to put on a show. You consider wrapping your dark tendrils around her thighs, her chin. You could keep her still no matter what the opinion of her own muscles; you could make her wait through your lecture with every appearance of studious decorum.

When Vriska glares at you, it’s a dare. Try it. Take her if you can. If you can take her, proooooooove it.

But you don’t have anything to prove.

You cross the floor. Shadows are moving at her crotch, a less metaphorical shifting of light. There is some piece of alien anatomy writhing underneath the orange of her pants. This is god-tier fabric. The chance of its failure holds at a steady zero.

“I didn’t realize that you want something from me, Vriska.” You place your thumb over the twisting organ, close enough for her to be aware of its location, but not to provide any pressure. “Why don’t you simply ask? There’s always a chance I’ll take pity.”

“You fucking bitch,” Vriska hisses, barely this side of recognizable language. “You snobby snobby know-it-all _snob_. I hate you.”

“Yes,” you say, careful to keep the amusement in your voice cool and dispassionate. You lean slowly towards her, stopping just when you could close the half inch between your lips, but Vriska has no such freedom. “It seems that our interactions will always be greased with the oil of our vitriol.”

Vriska’s nostrils flare like she’s trying to breathe you in, to reach for you in the only way you’ve left her. Her wings flutter a weak breeze around you, once, twice, and fall.

You say into her fangs: “So let it be sweet.”

**Author's Note:**

> Much belated Glossary Section! (I'm still not sure I'm pretentious enough for a fic with a Glossary Section, but *Rose* definitely is.)
> 
>  **Lepidopterology:** The collection and study of members of the order Lepidoptera. Ie, butterflies and moths.
> 
>  **Nabokov:** Famous lepidopterologist! (Who is _not_ actually famous for his interest in _butterflies_.)
> 
>  **Killing Jar:** Okay, this term does not actually show up in the story, but here is the most commonly imagined way to kill butterflies you want to mount on a board (though others will give better results). You grab the insect with a net, contain it in a specialized glass container, and make it breathe poison until it stops moving.
> 
> The funny thing is the commonest poison. (Spoilers, it is ether. Ether will knock out a person too, if you have more of it.)
> 
>  **Sweet Oil Of Vitriol:** Once upon a time, sulphuric acid was known as “oil of vitriol”, which I think we can agree is a much more romantic phrase. There are tons of chemical reactions involving sulphuric acid, and one thing you can do is “sweeten” it with ethanol, resulting in “sweet oil of vitriol”.
> 
> Or, in today’s parlance, _ether_.


End file.
